


wide-eyed, both in silence

by Merideath



Series: brittle bones [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky is a beautiful bastard, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:45:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merideath/pseuds/Merideath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without meaning to, a week passes and Darcy never sees Bucky or Steve. She sends a few texts back and forth with Bucky because she’s worried about him, but there is a call to assemble and the tower is empty of heroes for a little while. Darcy can’t help but feel slightly relieved that they are all away and out of her hair. She focuses on work instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wide-eyed, both in silence

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to katertots for prompting this fic, beta'ing all three pieces of it and holding my hand while I worried over the words not coming out right.

Wide-eyed, both in silence- Candles by Daughter

 

Without meaning to, a week passes and Darcy never sees Bucky or Steve. She sends a few texts back and forth with Bucky because she’s worried about him, but there is a call to assemble and the tower is empty of heroes for a little while. Darcy can’t help but feel slightly relieved that they are all away and out of her hair. She focuses on work instead.

Working for S.H.I.E.L.D. is a blessing and a curse, but there is rarely a dull day even when there are no rampaging beasts, science experiments gone awry or incompetent terrorists hell bent on the destruction of a biscuit baking factory. Honestly, most of the time you just can’t make up the shit in the reports that land on Coulson’s or her desk. There are real threats, too, when the agents don’t return, when the team comes back battered and bruised with grim faces. Sometimes you can still lose even when you win.

Darcy sits at her desk snapping little squares of dark chocolate off the bar and lining them up neatly beside her favourite flask, brushed steel with a band of green enamel engraved with a caffeine molecule on one side and theobromine (chocolate) molecule on the other. The flask is filled with a delicious dark chocolate mocha, made with an absolutely obscene number of espresso shots that Steve would disapprove of. Darcy frowns at the thought and sends her mind skittering away from all thoughts of Steve and onto the files opening on her computer screen. It is going to be a very long night because some little shit has been trying to hack one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s servers, and though not successful, the tech team is having trouble finding the hacker, which means Darcy gets to use her skills.

Hours later at the end of a twisting trail of breadcrumbs, Darcy finds the hacker and sends off a series of emails and messages to tech and Coulson. She is savouring the last square of chocolate and as it melts on her tongue her phone vibrates on the table with a new message from Coulson saying the team is on the way back home. Darcy breathes out slowly, releasing a knot of tension that she hadn’t known was there. Five minutes later her phone vibrates again, this time with a text from Bucky saying ‘Home. Pancakes tomorrow? Missed you, Doll.’ Darcy hesitates before sending a quick reply, ‘Sorry Bucky, I have a meeting with Hill and Coulson in the morning. Sunday, I promise. -D’ She never uses text speak with either James or Steve, though they understand it well enough from Stark’s constant texts; they rarely reply to it. Stubborn asses. 

She slips out of Sunday’s breakfast meet up because Stark manages to blow up half of a lab, and Darcy ends up consoling a weeping assistant and trying to calm down a furious Dr. Foster. And this starts a week that goes from bad to worse. Thursday at lunch time, Darcy makes her escape from mediating between Stark and Dr. Richards. They are negotiating the exchange of data and toys and neither genius plays well with others.

She is gone from the tower for less than thirty minutes and receives over two dozen texts from Stark and three phone calls. Apologising to the barista at her favourite coffee shop, she grabs her iced mocha and sandwich while listening to Stark whine over the phone she is worried will become permanently attached to her ear. “I’m on my way back now. No, don’t do that, Mr. Stark. No, no, don’t do that. Where is Miss Potts? No, Coulson will not—” Darcy’s words are cut off when she crashes into a solid wall of plaid shirt. Her phone goes flying and ice cold coffee splashes all over her white blouse and grey pencil skirt. “Fucking fantastic.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t...Darcy?” rumbles an all too familiar voice as she sighs and plucks ice out of her cleavage.

“Hey there, Steve,” she mutters and grabs napkins off a table to mop up the coffee on her blouse as Steve picks up her phone and awkwardly hands it to her. “Thanks.”

“Let me buy you another coffee,” Steve offers the same time Darcy’s phone starts blaring AC/DC. Darcy scowls, glaring as Tony Stark’s grinning face pops up on the screen.

“Don’t worry about it, Steve. I have to get back to the tower before something explodes.” Darcy swipes her across the screen, “I told you not to mess with my phone Stark. I will be back in ten minutes,” she snaps shoving the phone into her pocket and pushing past a flock of tourists and out onto the street.

“Darcy, wait up, I’ll walk with you,” Steve calls out as she weaves through pedestrians walking too slowly for her. “Are you mad at me? At Bucky and me?” he asks and Darcy jerks her head up to look at him.

She counts to ten in her head; maybe more like seven and a half. “Everything is fine,” she replies, voice slightly brittle and she turns her head away to resume the march back the few blocks to the tower.

“No, it’s not fine,” Steve replies and gently wraps his hand around her upper arm halting her progress.

“What do you want me to say, Steve? Tell me and I will say it,” she grits out tilting her head back farther, eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Steve pulls his hand back, and stuffs his hands in his pockets, head tilted to the side examining her as if she were some problem he had to solve.

“What? Why would you—” he begins, but she cuts him off.

“Why would I what, Steve? Spit it out?”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“Oh, let me think…could it possibly be the fight in James’ apartment? You warning him off of me? What the fuck is that about? Huh, Steve? The way you looked at me when I stepped into the hall, all that rage and disappointment that I fucked your best friend.” 

“Darcy, stop it. I never—”

“No, I won’t. It was just comfort, Steven. Just sex. Fuck, you have a girlfriend, you should know about these things. I’ve heard Bucky’s stories, even if you don’t fuck and tell. So leave me alone today. I have a work to do and I cannot handle any more shit right now. So think whatever you want of me, I’m done.” There’s more Darcy wants to scream but she holds her tongue, deliberately turning her back on Steve and hurries through the crowd and back to the tower.  
......

Late that night after filing her last report Darcy slips off the elevator on her floor and finds James leaning on the wall outside her apartment door. “No, just no. Not today, James,” she snarls as she slaps her hand against the palm plate.

“Panties in a bit of a twist there, doll?” James drawls slowly, scraping his metal fingers along the wall.

“I’m going to run a bath, cry into the bubbles listen to sad music, and you are not invited to my pity party,” she snaps as she pushes through the door and tosses her bag and phone on the table.

“Such a shame doll; you were a vision naked,” James grins and shuts the door behind himself.

“Holy shit, what happened to your face?” Darcy exclaims when she actually looks at him. There is a cut above his eyebrow, a glorious black eye, a fat lip, and bruising along the right side of his face.

“Ah that, seems you aren’t the only one with twisted knickers. Did some sparring with Cap today s’all.” James smiles, then winces when it hurts his face. “Go on take your bath. I’ll order you some food.” James nods and wraps an arm around her, giving her a quick squeeze. “After I find something to drink.”

Darcy strips off her jacket and drops it in the hall as she makes her way to the bathroom. The best perk of living in the towers is the big bath and endless hot water to fill it. She starts the water running then rummages under the sink for a bottle of rose scented bubble bath, pouring a generous dollop in the water. She swirls her fingers in the forming bubbles and strips out of her clothes, leaving them scattered across the floor.

Darcy sinks down under the water and lets the heat and comforting scent ease away some of the day’s tension. And if a few tears mix in with the bath water, no one will know. When her fingers begin to prune, she unplugs the bath and steps out, wrapping herself in her beloved green fuzzy robe with the green frogs on the pockets. She walks out of the bathroom, drying her hair with a white towel and stops dead at the sight of James and Steve in her living room. James is sprawled out on one of the small twin sofas and Steve stands awkwardly to one side, hands shoved in his pockets.

“What’s going on? Why is Steve here?”

“Because you are both idiots and you need to talk. Sit down. We are going to talk like grown ups…about the weather, Steve breaking up with his girlfriend, how fucking stupid you both are and make everything better.”

“Fuck you, Bucky,” Steve snaps as he drops down on the sofa facing him.

“You wish, Rogers,” James grins and pats the seat beside him. Darcy rolls her eyes but sits down, curling her legs underneath her. “So, Darcy…tell the punk here what you said the night we slept together.” James looks at her and arches an expressive brow at her baffled look.

“What? No, fuck you, James,” Darcy startles, wrapping her arms around her middle and shooting James a venomous look. “How is this supposed to make things better?”

“Tell him, doll face, or I will,” Bucky challenges.

“You are a fucking asshole, you know that?” Darcy snarls, fingers tangling in the belt of her robe, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. “You want me to tell Steve about the night you cried and fucked me into the mattress?” she hisses and stands up but James wraps a hand around her wrist to keep her from walking away. Darcy tugs on her hand and hisses.

“It’s gone on long enough, doll.”

“Fuck you.”

“Bucky, leave her alone.” Steve frowns and sets his bottle down on Darcy’s coffee table.

“Fine, you want me to share? I’ll share. I sobbed Steve’s name when your tongue was pressed between my legs. You happy now, James? Let me fucking go.”

“Because?”

“Because I’m an idiot and I made the mistake of falling in love with my best friend. I’m done. Let me go, and get the fuck out.” Darcy’s voice breaks but she refuses to let any tears fall. James’ hand loosens on her wrist and Darcy spins out of his reach and bolts out of the room.

...........

“Darcy?” Steve falters as he watches her run from the room, disappearing down the hall. A door slams a few seconds later and he flinches and feels something twist and wrench inside him.

“You better grow some balls and go after her, punk. If you hurt her I will hurt you back, Captain,” Bucky smirks as he casually rocks back on his heels, but his eyes glitter with something a little darker.

Steve swallows hard and silently nods, the words held bitterly on his tongue as Bucky saunters to the door and slips out. Steve stands alone in Darcy’s living room, his hands clenched tight at his sides, as every word Darcy said rolls through his mind. He isn’t sure when he ever felt quite so rattled since he woke from seventy years in the ice. 

Without realizing he had moved his feet, he finds himself at Darcy’s bedroom door, pressing his forehead to the door. He takes a steadying breath and wraps a hand around the doorknob, twisting it slowly and pushing the door open. The room is dark and Darcy is a small dark lump in a sea of white sheets, facing the wall away from him. Her hair a wet tangle on the pillow, her breath is hitching between sobs. "Go away, Barnes. I hate you right now," she says, voice thick with tears.

Steve sighs and walks across the room and the bed dips down under his weight as he slips his shoes off and lines them up neatly on the floor. "Bucky went to cause trouble somewhere else," he murmurs and lies down beside her on his back staring up at the tiles on ceiling.

"I'm sorry, Steve," Darcy says on a sob and then Steve shifts, rolling on his side and wraps his arm across her slender waist, pulling her back into his chest.

"Please don't cry, Darce, it's killing me," Steve whispers against her ear, his voice sounding thick and foreign to him, and he clears his throat trying to find words that escape him. “Shhh, sleep now, we’ll talk in the morning,” he whispers, and kisses her temple. Darcy trembles in his arms but doesn’t pull away from him. He laces his fingers through her small hand.

He holds her tight until the trembling stops and her breathing evens out. He tries to untangle himself but she murmurs his name and pulls his arm tighter around her body. He kisses her temple again and whispers "I love you" into her dark hair. Things aren't perfect; they rarely are, but he has her in his arms and Bucky has given him his blessing in his own way. He falls asleep curled with her all night, breathing in the scent of roses clinging to her skin and the wild tangle of her hair ticking against his face.


End file.
